Recently a young mother confided in me that her almost eight-year-old daughter had begun telling lies. The lies were mostly small in scope, and didn't seem to be focused on hiding anything in particular. In fact, they seemed mostly like little white lies. When this mother confronted her daughter, the youngster explained that she had noticed that some kids seem to get away with lies. She gave a few examples of other children who had either told a lie at school, or at home, and had seemingly not been caught. Moreover, in some cases these children had gotten away with something because their lies had been taken for the truth.

Imagine this scenario: You've just instructed your six-year-old not to go inside anyone's house without first coming and asking for your permission. Next thing you know, you're standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes and you look out the window just in time to see your child enter the neighbor's house across the street with her little friend of the same age. You think to yourself, "What is wrong with that child? Didn't I just tell her not to do that?" Yes you did, but for some reason it didn't completely take.

Remember when you were nine or ten years old and you had that elaborate doll collection? Or maybe it was baseball cards . . . or trains . . . or model cars? If you did have a collection of some sort, you'll also remember that you used to spend hours arranging and rearranging your treasured items in a number of ways including by color, size, order of favoritism, etc. You would view your collection over and over in its various prioritized arrangements. Each item would have a specific meaning to you, and the space occupied by the item would also have some implication as to the degree of importance or appreciation you had.